Monday, April 4, 2011

We have a Gross Post Office Box

Yeah, it's really a gross. No kidding. It's PO Box #144 in good ol' Rimrock, Airy Zonie 86335. ( A Gross is officially a dozen dozen or the number 144. ) Rimrock is also known as Dimrock, Wimwok, RimSchlock and other variants not suitable for a family blog. We've been using a PO Box in a pseudo-city that can't make up it's mind about it's name. We thought we'd be over there in The Village more often but it hasn't turned out like that either last winter or this time around. With gas so expensive, it costs $5 to go check our mail. Not a real good plan. So, we're no longer Village People and we're back with an official Dimrock address. We will be able to ride our bicycles to check our mail. It's only a four mile round trip to the Post Office here verses nearly a 40 mile round to the Village. We had PO Box #3 for 20 years in Dimrock but gave it up when we sold out in 2006. We waited and checked periodically to see if we could get a good box number. Frankly, a gross one came available today and a gross is great. It's gonna be impossible to forget a box with a gross number like 144! Some of you may be wondering why we didn't get a Dimrock address back in 2009. Well, the former Postmaster was a real ogre. We didn't want to deal with him. He cast a Darth Vader black cloud over the place. There's a new nice guy there now and everyone's morale and customer service is cheerful and feng shui. So, here we are back again enjoying some more deju vu.

Cheers, jp

PS--Here's a cool thing about a gross. It comes from Wiki (naturally). We will be sure to practice this technique at our next campfire.

"It can be used in duodecimal counting. The use of gross likely originated from the fact that 144 can be counted on the fingers using the fingertips and first two joints of each finger when marked by the thumb of one hand. The other hand is then used to count multiples of 12. Therefore, 12 countings of 12 equals 144. It is a simple counting system that can be practiced without paper or other marks."

Here's how the Fib numbers work: You add the latest number to the last (most previous) number to get the next number. Hence, 144 + 89 = 233. Then you add 233 to 144 and get 377 and then you add 377 to 233 and get 610 and on and on it goes. Somebody once said rabbit populations expand by the same mathematical sequence.